FILE PHOTO: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024. REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo
A president who calls his opponents ‘scum’ and ‘the enemy within,’ who ordered the murder of 11 people in a boat headed for Trinidad then posted snuf photos of the hit, and has repeatedly encouraged political violence in his name, is trying to catapult Charlie Kirk’s murder into an expansion of his own powers. Trump immediately used Kirk’s death as a catalyst to declare a nationwide crackdown against political adversaries, vowing to silence progressive voices who are critical of Kirk’s pro-gun, pro-violence, white nationalist message, while he celebrates Kirk for being an icon of free speech.
Setting aside the thick irony of celebrating Kirk’s free speech by shutting down voices against him, it is well settled legal precedent that government attempts to silence opposing political views violate the 1st Amendment.
Trump loves to hate
Although the shooter, who comes from a pro-Trump MAGA family, is now in custody, Trump immediately politicized the murder before the shooter’s identity was even known.
In a televised statement from the Oval Office, Trump told the nation that Trump’s own political opponents were responsible for Kirk’s death, claiming, “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and other political violence.”
Anyone outside the Fox News bubble knows that Trump himself is the Inciter-in-Chief, having encouraged violence against his perceived political “enemies” for years. He not only organized a violent physical attack against his own government on J6, he pardoned everyone who committed violenceon his behalf that day, including people convicted of other heinous crimes who violently attacked the police. Whipping up his gun-toting base instead of urging national healing, Trump keeps agitating about “radical left political violence,” to encourage his militant followers, including pardoned J6 rioters, to target them.
Trump expounded that, "It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree,” without acknowledging how he personally leads the effort to demonize anyone who doesn’t support him politically. Trump, unlike any president before him, literally calls Democrats ‘the enemy within’ as he threatens to deploy the military against them.
Trump’s outrageous oval office address demonstrates his unfitness to serve
Trump’s oval office address after Kirk was murdered deserves a verbatim reading. After praising pro-gun, anti-gay, anti-minority Kirk as the “ideal American,” Trump’s speech turned dangerously divisive. He said:
“… Americans and the media (should) confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.
For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.
My Administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives…”
Trump did not mention the Minnesota legislator and her husband who were murdered only two months ago. He did not mention how Nancy Pelosi’s husband was beaten with a hammer, nor Don Jr.’s sickening mockery of it. He did not mention the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Governor Witmer, any school shootings, the torching of the Pennsylvania governor’s home, the violence he encouraged on J6, nor any political violence executed on his behalf since he began his 2016 campaign. He also failed to mention his unprecedented, nonstop attacks against federal judges who rule against him, or that last summer's assassination attempt against his own person was committed by a registered Republican.
Thankful for an adult in the room
In direct contrast to Trump, Utah’s Republican Governor Cox is the adult in the room making a full-throated appeal for national healing. Cox, calling for forgiveness and national unity, is doing what a responsible stateman does: he’s trying to lower the political temperature in a deeply fraught moment as Trump does just the opposite.
Governor Cox said in a press conference, “We can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence — it metastasizes. Because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.”
Trump does not want an off-ramp. On Fox News Friday morning he was still trying to rachet up the hatred even after the shooter was caught. When a Fox panelist pushed back with, “We have radicals on the right as well. How do we fix this country?, Trump said: “I'll tell you something that's gonna get me in trouble but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem.”
Trump keeps demonizing democrats in an effort to foment violence against them, but no democracy can survive when its leader turns political differences into death sentences.
Trump is supporting something with his rhetoric, but it’s not democracy.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.